QandO

September 09, 2004

Deconstructing the Boston Globe ... again!
Posted by McQ

This is getting old.

The Boston Globe claims:

But Bush fell well short of meeting his military obligation, a Globe reexamination of the records shows: Twice during his Guard service -- first when he joined in May 1968, and again before he transferred out of his unit in mid-1973 to attend Harvard Business School -- Bush signed documents pledging to meet training commitments or face a punitive call-up to active duty.

He didn't meet the commitments, or face the punishment, the records show. The 1973 document has been overlooked in news media accounts. The 1968 document has received scant notice.

There’s a reason for that. It’s a stock form that everyone signs. IOW, it means you understand and acknowledge the contents. That’s it. That’s all

On July 30, 1973, shortly before he moved from Houston to Cambridge, Bush signed a document that declared, ''It is my responsibility to locate and be assigned to another Reserve forces unit or mobilization augmentation position. If I fail to do so, I am subject to involuntary order to active duty for up to 24 months. . . " Under Guard regulations, Bush had 60 days to locate a new unit.

Oh man .... there’s a darn good reason for that. He requested an “early out” and his discharge on September 5th. He was discharged on October 1st, 1973. Of course this is public record. It has been public record for a few years and available to anyone with the compunction to look it up ... which apparently excludes the Boston Globe.

But Bush never signed up with a Boston-area unit. In 1999, Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett told the Washington Post that Bush finished his six-year commitment at a Boston area Air Force Reserve unit after he left Houston. Not so, Bartlett now concedes. ''I must have misspoke," Bartlett, who is now the White House communications director, said in a recent interview.

All this indicates is Bartlett doesn’t understand this anymore than the Boston Globe does.

And early in his Guard service, on May 27, 1968, Bush signed a ''statement of understanding" pledging to achieve ''satisfactory participation" that included attendance at 24 days of annual weekend duty -- usually involving two weekend days each month -- and 15 days of annual active duty. ''I understand that I may be ordered to active duty for a period not to exceed 24 months for unsatisfactory participation," the statement reads.

Yet Bush, a fighter-interceptor pilot, performed no service for one six-month period in 1972 and for another period of almost three months in 1973, the records show.

Note the “usually involving two weekends days a month and 15 days annual active training”. That is only a guideline. I spent 21 years in the reserves and I never ever did a 15 day annual training (AT). My unit, because of what it did, chose to do what is called fragmented AT which allowed us to do our AT on weekends during the year. We’ve had reservists who, with permission, missed months of drills for a variety of reasons and were allowed to make them up. The bottom line is not how you get the necessary points but whether you get them. And Bush’s record indicates he did what was necessary to do so. But understand that there is nothing which requires every drill be made or 2 weeks in the summer are required. As it states, that’s “usually” how it works.

The reexamination of Bush's records by the Globe, along with interviews with military specialists who have reviewed regulations from that era, show that Bush's attendance at required training drills was so irregular that his superiors could have disciplined him or ordered him to active duty in 1972, 1973, or 1974. But they did neither. In fact, Bush's unit certified in late 1973 that his service had been ''satisfactory" -- just four months after Bush's commanding officer wrote that Bush had not been seen at his unit for the previous 12 months.

A number of flaws in this argument. Irregularity of attendance is not, in and of itself, a cause for discipline. Irregularity without permission is. If Bush had permission to drill irregularly, there was absolutely no cause for discipline. There is nothing in his record to indicate otherwise so it is a real stretch to conclude that his superiors “could have disciplined him or ordered him to active duty” in those three years. And speaking of those years, he was discharged in October of 1973, so how the Globe concludes he could have been ‘disciplined’ in ‘74 is beyond me.

Lastly, since Bush was in Alabama for the previous 12 months, it stands to reason his commander in Texas would make that sort of a report. He couldn't, by regulation, do any other sort of report. That's what he stood up in said when he said he'd backdate the report, but it would still be an N/O.

Bartlett, in a statement to the Globe last night, sidestepped questions about Bush's record. In the statement, Bartlett asserted again that Bush would not have been honorably discharged if he had not ''met all his requirements." In a follow-up e-mail, Bartlett declared: ''And if he hadn't met his requirements you point to, they would have called him up for active duty for up to two years."

That assertion by the White House spokesman infuriates retired Army Colonel Gerald A. Lechliter, one of a number of retired military officers who have studied Bush's records and old National Guard regulations, and reached different conclusions.

''He broke his contract with the United States government -- without any adverse consequences. And the Texas Air National Guard was complicit in allowing this to happen," Lechliter said in an interview yesterday. ''He was a pilot. It cost the government a million dollars to train him to fly. So he should have been held to an even higher standard."

Lechliter is a flaming fool. What Bush requested and got, time away from his unit to work his civilian job, is as common a reason for this sort of occurrence as one can find in the Guard and Reserves. Civilian employment always gets the priority nod in the reserve component. There’s nothing “complicit” in doing so.

Yes he was a pilot and yes it cost the government millions of dollars to train him, but Lechliter seems to forget that at the time this was going on, the US military was out of Vietnam and drawing down its military. They had a glut of pilots and they were discharging them right and left. Bush was in a non-flying slot in Alabama anyway.

Even retired Lieutenant Colonel Albert C. Lloyd Jr., a former Texas Air National Guard personnel chief who vouched for Bush at the White House's request in February, agreed that Bush walked away from his obligation to join a reserve unit in the Boston area when he moved to Cambridge in September 1973. By not joining a unit in Massachusetts, Lloyd said in an interview last month, Bush ''took a chance that he could be called up for active duty. But the war was winding down, and he probably knew that the Air Force was not enforcing the penalty."

But Lloyd said that singling out Bush for criticism is unfair. ''There were hundreds of guys like him who did the same thing," he said.

Lawrence J. Korb, an assistant secretary of defense for manpower and reserve affairs in the Reagan administration, said after studying many of the documents that it is clear to him that Bush ''gamed the system." And he agreed with Lloyd that Bush was not alone in doing so. ''If I cheat on my income tax and don't get caught, I'm still cheating on my income tax," Korb said.

After his own review, Korb said Bush could have been ordered to active duty for missing more than 10 percent of his required drills in any given year. Bush, according to the records, fell shy of that obligation in two successive fiscal years.

Both Lloyd and Korb miss one salient point. He could only have been ordered to active duty if he missed 10% of his required drills without permission. The fact that he wasn’t so ordered strongly suggests permission in the absence of any other evidence to the contrary. To assume otherwise is to do so with no factual evidence to support the assumption.

Korb said Bush also made a commitment to complete his six-year obligation when he moved to Cambridge, a transfer the Guard often allowed to accommodate Guardsmen who had to move elsewhere. ''He had a responsibility to find a unit in Boston and attend drills," said Korb, who is now affiliated with a liberal Washington think tank. ''I see no evidence or indication in the documents that he was given permission to forgo training before the end of his obligation. If he signed that document, he should have fulfilled his obligation."

Absolute rubbish. Again, you’ll find Bush’s request for discharge here. Approval was recommended. This was an era of “early outs” where service committments in both the active and reserve components were being given to reduce the size of the military. If Bush had a further obligation to serve, then the TANG would have disapproved his request. It didn’t. And, as requested, he was discharged honorably on 1 October, 1973.

To suggest that Bush should have sought out a unit in the 60 days he was awaiting his approved discharge is simply a stultifyingly stupid argument.

The documents Bush signed only add to evidence that the future president -- then the son of Houston's congressman -- received favorable treatment when he joined the Guard after graduating from Yale in 1968. Ben Barnes, who was speaker of the Texas House of Representatives in 1968, said in a deposition in 2000 that he placed a call to get young Bush a coveted slot in the Guard at the request of a Bush family friend.

Bush was given an automatic commission as a second lieutenant, and dispatched to flight school in Georgia for 13 months. In June 1970, after five additional months of specialized training in F-102 fighter-interceptor, Bush began what should have been a four-year assignment with the 111th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron.

Jon has handily dealt with the “favored treatment” nonsense here.

The Globe continues to ignore the fact that everyone in the military serves at the pleasure of the military. If things change then the military will change your obligation to that which they decide is best for the military. If they had required Bush to serve 4 years as a fighter pilot, he’d have been ordered to do so. If, on the other hand, they had a glut of fighter pilots because the war in Vietnam was winding down, and some wanted to leave early, they’d do that as well. Looking at this without the context of the Vietnam draw down of forces is disingenuous at best.

In May 1972, Bush was given permission to move to Alabama temporarily to work on a US Senate campaign, with the provision that he do equivalent training with a unit in Montgomery. But Bush's service records do not show him logging any service in Alabama until October of that year.

And even that service is in doubt. Since the Globe first reported Bush's spotty attendance record in May 2000, no one has come forward with any credible recollection of having witnessed Bush performing guard service in Alabama or after he returned to Houston in 1973. While Bush was in Alabama, he was removed from flight status for failing to take his annual flight physical in July 1972. On May 1, 1973, Bush's superior officers wrote that they could not complete his annual performance review because he had not been observed at the Houston base during the prior 12 months.

More poppycock. We have his dental records from AL. So unless he mailed his teeth in for examination, we know he was there. As Dale pointed out yesterday:

There is retired Lt. Col. John “Bill” Calhoun, unit's flight safety officer who told the Associated Press in February that he saw Bush “every drill period” ; Joe LeFevers, another member of the 187th, who told The Birmingham News that he remembered seeing Bush on base and remembered Bush because of his political job at the time on a U.S. Senate campaign; Joe Holcombe, who worked with Bush on the Blount campaign and told a local paper that he remembers Bush missing at least one campaign meeting because of his National Guard drills; James Anderson, who was a physician for the Montgomery-based 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group, who recalls performing a routine examination on Bush at Dannelly Air National Guard base in 1972; and Emily Marks Curtis, who dated Bush while he worked on the 1972 Senate campaign of Winton "Red" Blount, and who told a local paper that Bush had talked of going to Guard duty on the weekends.

And there’s also retired MSgt. James Copeland who was the Disbursement Accounting Supervisor (which was a full time slot) who remembers meeting Bush on at least two occassions at Dannelly field.

Apparently only we dumb-ass bloggers are able to find these witnesses to Bush’s presence there. Apparently that’s beyond the investigative resources of the Boston Globe.

As for the point that Bush was rated as not observed by an officer in Texas, it stands to reason he’d do so since the officer he was rating had been in Alabama for the majority of the year. The regulations require he do so since he hasn’t had the necessary time to render a fair evaluation. The Globe again tries its damndest to make something out of nothing and fully proves the point that they don’t know what they’re talking about.

Although the records of Bush's service in 1973 are contradictory, some of them suggest that he did a flurry of drills in 1973 in Houston -- a weekend in April and then 38 days of training crammed into May, June, and July. But Lechliter, the retired colonel, concluded after reviewing National Guard regulations that Bush should not have received credit -- or pay -- for many of those days either. The regulations, Lechliter and others said, required that any scheduled drills that Bush missed be made up either within 15 days before or 30 days after the date of the drill.

And of course what Lechliter doesn’t tell you is that that can all be waived by the local commander if he deems it necessary to do so. If you look carefully at the documentation, you find that most were ADT days, not IDT days. You don’t issue orders for IDT, only for ADT or AT. IDT days are drill days. ADT days are “active duty for training” days. So he wasn’t getting all “drill days”, he was also getting Active Duty for Training days. You’d think a retired colonel would know the difference. For instance take a look at this record.

See the June 23/24 date? That’s an IDT. A drill. Why? Because you get twice the points for days served on an IDT. The two entries above it are ADT entries and the two below it are ADT entries. Why? Because you only get one point for every day served.

The next IDT entry is July 16-19 where he apparently made up his June drill and did his July drill. Right after that comes another IDT date when he apparently did his August drill early. The rest are ADT days. So his makeup for June was within 30 days and his early August drill was within 15 days of August drill. IOW, he was actually ahead on his drills in July.

His records are very easy to read if you know what the freakin’ hell you’re reading. Looking at his record, I find nothing irregular in his drilling and ADT days which wouldn’t be found on any reservists record who was active and traveling a lot.

Lechliter said the records push him to conclude that Bush had little interest in fulfilling his obligation, and his superiors preferred to look the other way. Others agree. ''It appears that no one wanted to hold him accountable," said retired Major General Paul A. Weaver Jr., who retired in 2002 as the Pentagon's director of the Air National Guard.

Actually it appears Lechliter doesn’t have a clue and most likely after a cursory glance, Weaver doesn’t either.

Amazing.

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